Network traffic (typically in the form of packets) is transmitted across a network, such as the Internet, from a sending system (e.g., a computer system) to a receiving system (e.g., a computer system) via a network interface card (NIC). The NIC is a piece of hardware found in a typical computer system that includes functionality to send and receive network traffic, typically in the form of packets.
In order to transmit data via the NIC, the computer system may need to transfer the traffic to memory located on the NIC. Descriptions of the memory locations are referred to as memory descriptors. A computer system must obtain a description of the location of available NIC memory in order to successfully transfer the data to the NIC.